More people know Wayne Wheeler by his pets than by his name.
When people ask for him, a puzzled look glazes over the faces of the members of the Pentecostal Church of Gainesville.
Then, a glimmer of recognition.
“Oh, you mean Raccoon Man?” an elderly woman asked. “I think he’s changing into his choir robes now.”
Wheeler is the proud owner of three pet raccoons: Sister Ricky, a feisty 3-year-old; Sheba, Wheeler’s little baby; and Eli, who acts more like a monkey than a raccoon.
The word “pet” may be inappropriate to describe Wheeler’s relationship with these animals. They have their own room in his home. They come with him across town when Wheeler’s company, All Maintenance & Remodeling, gets a call to do a job. Wheeler’s car has been transformed into a raccoon sanctuary.
He opened the side door of his minivan, and three furry faces peered out into the night.
“Come here, little monkey!” the 47-year-old squealed to Eli. “Come give Papa a hug!”
Eli jumped onto Wheeler’s shoulder and climbed onto his back. The nimble animal made a dive for Wheeler’s back pocket before Wheeler put him back in the car.
“Watch out, they’ll empty your pockets,” Wheeler said. “Their favorite toy is my wallet.”
Though Wheeler’s eyes light up with excitement nowadays, he said they used to be full of drug-fueled despair.
He grew up in the small town of Palatka, and he said he went from sometimes sneaking in a beer with a bad group of friends to being completely dependent on alcohol and crack cocaine.
He spent much of his young adult life drifting in and out of the Putnam County Courthouse, cashing in paychecks to feed his growing addictions and being generally dissatisfied with his life.
“I was ready to blow my freaking brains out,” Wheeler said. “I had friends with so many [heroin] track marks, it looked like they had chicken pox.”
He tried cleaning up once, but he soon found himself back in front of “his” judge, Peter T. Miller.
Wheeler said he was going to give the judge a scripted answer so he could get off with probation, but he felt different this time — like something had come over him.
“I told my judge, ‘If you don’t put me in jail, I’ll die out here,’” Wheeler remembered.
The judge gave him a year in the county jail, which thrilled Wheeler.
He used that time to get clean and get his life on the straight and narrow. He also found God, who he credits for his successes.
“He exposed the emptiness of my soul and filled it,” Wheeler said passionately.
After he was released from jail, he got an unexpected phone call from a friend. The friend told Wheeler about two baby raccoons he found behind a Lowe’s Home Improvement store and asked if Wheeler wanted the animals.
They were wild at first — seemingly untamable. He named them Rocky and Ricky, who was later renamed Sister Ricky when Wheeler found out her gender.
While Sister Ricky seemed to mellow as time wore on, Rocky was a fierce ball of energy.
He’d growl. He’d bite. He’d jump around the room so fast you couldn’t even see him to catch him.
In short, he was a handful. But Wheeler knew what to do.
He was living with a few other post-prisoners when he decided to gather everyone in the living area.
“We prayed over Rocky at the halfway house,” Wheeler said. “Three weeks later, he turned into nothing but a teddy bear.”
Years later, Rocky accidentally licked some of his topical flea medication and died of a heart attack.
Wheeler and Sister Ricky were devastated.
But Wheeler and Sister Ricky welcomed two new friends to share Wheeler’s nest of a car.
When it’s quiet and Wheeler isn’t around, the three masked mammals slink around the car, stopping only to investigate a loose piece of fabric and sniff the dashboard.
The second the door opens, they’re ready to play.
Wheeler jolted a seat in the car and Eli took off, practically flying from seat to seat.
Sister Ricky will suck on Wheeler’s thumb if she’s in the mood, and she can unscrew the cap of a water bottle with her little hands and drink.
Despite her training, Sister Ricky still refuses a harness and leash, unlike her two companions.
“They’re exactly like a 3-year-old little boy with ADHD,” Wheeler said. “They can hold things like a kid, but they play and eat like kittens.”
But raccoons are unlike most animals people are accustomed to.
They have two coats of thick, coarse fur. They love to splash around in water and shake their heads when they want to play.
Wheeler said they make more than 200 distinct noises.
What may be more fascinating than the animals themselves are people’s responses to Wheeler’s domesticated raccoons.
Some of his favorite responses happen at red lights.
Once, a couple of girls pulled up next to him, drumming a beat on their dashboard. When they looked over at him, Wheeler grabbed Sister Ricky and held her up to the window.
“They flipped,” he said.
But no matter what others may think about his unusual pets, Wheeler wouldn’t give them up for the world.
“They’re my best friends,” he said. “I don’t know what I’d do without them.”
Contact Shelby Webb at swebb@alligator.org.
Wayne Wheeler pours a drink for Eli, one of his three pet raccoons, outside the United Pentecostal Church, at 8105 NW 23 Ave., on Sunday.
Wayne Wheeler’s 3-year-old pet raccoon, Sister Ricky, leans back and swigs some soda from a Sprite bottle in Wheeler’s van on Sunday.
